But to suggest, as some have, that his blunder approaches Todd Akin territory is a desperate reach fueled by Republicans tired of having to absorb gaffes by members of their own party…

…Call Salazar's comments patronizing. Say that they fit in with the school of thought that armed citizens, women in this case, can't be trusted to use a gun properly. But to equate his comments with Akin's extremist views on rape and abortion is a leap in logic that ignores the facts in an effort to manufacture a "gotcha" moment.

After Colorado Rep. Joe Salazar (D) suggested that women are too paranoid to responsibly carry a gun — a failed attempt to make the point that allowing college students to carry concealed weapons on campus won’t actually help prevent sexual assaults — the Larimer County Republican Women set out to prove that women need more than just whistles to protect them from rape. But they chose to do so by mocking sexual violence itself, compiling a fake “rape defense kit” with a whistle and a pen and labeling it “In Case of Rape, Robbery, or Assault OPEN IMMEDIATELY.”

…[M]aking light of the sexual violence that remains incredibly prevalent on college campuses — an estimated one in four women will be sexually assaulted while they are in college, and university officials have been notorious participants in perpetuating rape culture — is an offensive counter to the Democratic lawmaker’s original comments.

Here are some photos making the rounds today on Twitter and Facebook, of a number of Republican Colorado legislators, including Minority Leader Mark Waller, posing with something called a "Rape Defense Kit" distributed by the Larimer County Republican Women. The "kit" is labeled "In Case of Rape, Robbery, or Assault OPEN IMMEDIATELY" and contains, as you can see above, a whistle and a ballpoint pen.

When we wrote earlier today about Republicans revealing a side of themselves more offensive to most women than anything said by Democrats in the recent hot-button debate over gun safety legislation in Colorado, we could not have predicted that so many Republican legislators would provide such an excellent, if very disturbing, example of what we meant. We return to advice we have given before about stepping on the third rail of insensitivity regarding the crime of rape–it seems to us the only thing that could be worse would be to make jokes about it.

Oh poor babies, you don't like jokes? You make jokes like this all the time.

This is not making fun of rape, it's making fun of Democrats who want to take away women's right of self defense. This is funny because its what Democrats really expect women to do if they are attacked. Colorado Pols knows this is hurting Dems badly and they are trying to redirect. It's not going to work. The whole country knows what a joke Democrats in Colorado are now.

You know, given the piss poor job you did spinning during the election, I'm surprised that your overlords have decided to keep you employed. This post of yours is every bit as accurate and truthful as your confident predictions of Romney victory, and Romney carrying Colorado by a comfortable margin.

So the question is, are they so desperate that they just have to keep you employed as the designated spinmeister here, or is the official spin so bad that it doesn't matter who is sent to post it?

I guess it's all the same in the end. The GOrP is a hopelessly damaged brand. The Party of Rape – it might as well be a registered trademark. Middle of the road voters aren't going to be fooled anytime soon.

AGOP…As I read the above bullshit, I caught the most amazing visual of the Wicked Witch of the West as she began to melt..her lament went something like …Oh, no!! This can't be…I'm melting…Oh…noooo…..not my incredible wickedness…Oh,noooo. How can this be??

You don't understand this at all. Yes Joe Salazar said something really bad. And if you had just called him out on it you would have gotten some mileage out of it. But instead your party has turned around and basically said "look, we can be even more insensitive."

See, ArapG, this is the GOP's problem. You really do think Dems make jokes just like this all the time. You really can't tell the difference. It's why, when Obama was running the first time and you GOPers were e-mailing each other cartoons featuring Michelle as a gorilla and watermelons on the White House lawn, you really thought those were just cute jokes, nothing anyone should be offended by, not racist at all.

That's why, even though the problem is not failure to do a good enough job of selling your message (though rightie pols seem to think that's what it is) rather than the message itself, your pols repeatedly show an inability to learn how to communicate any message in less offensive terms. It's because you really don't understand why the things you say are offensive in the first place so it's very hard to remember, every time you open your mouths, what not to say.

You know, back in GW's day you really were making inroads, taking more of the minority vote by appealing to enough religious conservative Blacks and Hispanics with your phony but effective religious/family values message to make a real dent but your base was just too fundamentally racist and bigoted to allow the party to hang on to that brief up-tick. You can't help offending minorities and women because you don't know how to talk to them or about them any other way.

You did notice that Americans elected the man your party insisted was anti-American to a second term as President rather decisively and also elected a majority Dem Senate (when you were sure Rs would take it back) and gained 8 seats in the House despite all your best gerrymandering efforts? You do know that really happened? You do know that the majority of Americans support the Dem positions on immigration reform, gay rights, universal background checks for gun purchases and bans on high capacity magazines?

Maybe not. You certainly show no sign of so much as considering what all of that means. You can't even use the excuse, as many Rs do, that you did so poorly in 2012 only because Mittens was such a lousy candidate because you were so sure he was a terrific candidate and would win in a landslide. At least that's what you always said.

As a a troll you are a complete flop. The only thing you manage to stir up is amazement at so much sheer idiocy.

You really do think Dems make jokes just like this all the time. You really can't tell the difference. It's why, when Obama was running the first time and you GOPers were e-mailing each other cartoons featuring Michelle as a gorilla and watermelons on the White House lawn, you really thought those were just cute jokes, nothing anyone should be offended by, not racist at all.

I'd say that the problem is a bit broader on what is loosely my side than what you are getting at BlueCat. I'm pretty sure I've seen threads and emails comparing the number of fetuses aborted to the number of people murdered within the holocaust, postings incorrectly saying that immigrants from Mexico have a sky-high rate of leprosy and other diseases, comments about Obama planning on cancelling elections in 2016, or on the Country itself disolving if Obama won. While I dislike certain abortions as being cruel and believe Obama is bad for the country, I think we can both agree that the above-mentioned rhetoric is not only unhelpful from a political angle but it also serves to warp the POV of those who see their friends posting it. If one's "echo chamber" is constantly posting such stuff what one thinks is middle of the road/commonly accepted can start to shift.

ArapaGOrP, Republican jokes have a dynamic to them that make them worse than any liberal joke. You guys love to make fun of the disadvantaged and downtrodden. We love to make fun of the priviledged and powerful. So while you make light of the fear and terror of rape victims here, we poke fun at the hypocrisy of your leaders. Rush Limbaugh's unacknowledged drug addiction, for example. (That will cease being funny when he admits that he had a problem, because then he's a victim. Until then, he's a hypocrite.) Or his likely sex tourism. This is a man you embrace while calling yourself "moral" at the same time.

So what's my point? Your mean spirited jokes, a tool for enforcing continued victimization of all who aren't white, wealthy, and male, are magnitudes worse that our jokes, whose targets are much better able to receive them.

Another GOrP false equivalence. You'd have nothing to say at all if you had to be honest.

I'm almost 60, a grandma, and around 250 pounds and change, with bad knees. But I would double-dog dare Mr. Waller try a little hand-to-hand with me, me wielding a magic marker in "self-defense" (so I could mark but not injure him). This would be a very fair test of whether a gun is the only self-defense option in existance.

Get a Double Barrel Shotgun, (This was to a woman) Go Outside and Fire Two Blasts.

1) What he advised, is HIGHLY ILLEGAL as for most people, it would be high dangerous for bystandards and land the person in Jail.

2) Your Gun would be empty when facing a Home Intruder.

3) For a small woman like myself, I'd be thrown to the floor dazed and confussed by shooting a Double Barrel Shotgun.

But I did take him up on part of his advice; I bought myself a Simi-Auto Saiga 12 Shotgun with several 20 Round Drums, looks like a Shotgun from Hell and would have Home Invaders Messing themselves before I pull the Trigger; the Kick isn't that bad neither.